Medical Staff

Turning over the coin: Could the hospitalist boom hurt continuity of care, PCPs, and hospital revenue?

Medical Staff Briefing, June 1, 2009

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A March 12 New England Journal of Medicine article confirms what we already know: The hospitalist community in the United States is booming. This comes as no surprise; just ask the estimated 23,000 hospitalists already in practice, as reported by the Society of Hospital Medicine. The study, Growth in the Care of Older Patients by Hospitalists in the United States, however, brings up questions about what this growth means. The increasing number of hospitalists since the 1990s is generally regarded as a good thing, according to the study’s authors, but there’s also a downside to this trend. In particular, the rise in hospital-based medicine has some wondering whether continuity of care is at risk, says Gulshan Sharma, MD, MPA, assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

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